Chapter 30 — The Weight of Silence
The walls didn't speak, but they pressed down on him with every breath. The stone was cold, and the air stale, as if it remembered every secret whispered and every scream stifled within its cold grasp. Days folded into nights without clear edges, and he drifted somewhere between waking and a restless half-sleep, caught in a limbo of silence and shadow.
His body ached in places he couldn't name. The muscles in his shoulders, stiff from sitting so long, pulled tight like taut strings. His hands trembled, sometimes without warning, especially when no one was near to see. He wanted to reach out, to grab something, anything—light, air, a voice—but his own limbs felt foreign, as though they belonged to someone else.
He tried to move. Slowly at first, testing the boundaries of this cage. The stone floor was cold beneath his bare feet, rough against his skin. The room was small, but the space felt endless when your mind was a cage.
He pressed his palms flat against the floor and pushed up. His knees buckled under him, the weak protest of unused joints. He crawled toward the window, the lattice casting long shadows like prison bars on his skin. The sky outside was pale, a washed-out gray. No sun, no clouds. Just a blank, endless dome of quiet.
He pressed his forehead against the cool glass, wishing he could break through, wishing the silence would shatter with a single scream. But the silence was a weight, not a shatter.
Every breath felt like a struggle. Not because his lungs failed him, but because his throat was a graveyard. Words died before they could form. Sounds died before they could begin.
He tried again to speak, to make a noise, any noise.
His mouth opened, his tongue moved. But the sound was gone before it could be heard.
Frustration bloomed like a dark flower inside him, twisting roots through his chest. He wanted to scream—wanted to shout, to break the silence with a flood of sound. But there was nothing.
Only silence.
He curled up in the corner of the room, clutching his knees to his chest, trying to hold himself together. The silence roared inside his head, drowning out his thoughts. Memories clawed their way to the surface—shouts, laughter, screams, his own voice lost in the chaos of a cruel world. They felt like ghosts, slipping through his fingers every time he reached for them.
The woman—the maid—came again. Her footsteps were slow, indifferent. She placed the tray down, didn't look at him. No sign of pity. No sign of anger. Just empty routine.
He stared at the food, but couldn't bring himself to eat.
The hunger gnawed at his belly, but his stomach had long stopped feeling hunger the way it once did. It was just another ache, like everything else.
His hands trembled as he reached for the cup of water. His fingers brushed the cool surface, and for a moment, he imagined it slipping through his hands and shattering on the floor. The sharp sound would fill the silence. But he held the cup steady, afraid even of the smallest noise.
The door shut behind her.
He was alone again.
His thoughts spiraled, dark and sharp.
Why was he here? What did they want from him?
The questions had no answers. Only the cold walls, the stale air, the endless quiet.
He forced himself up, shaking off the weight that tried to pull him back down. His legs protested as he stood unsteadily. Step by slow step, he moved toward the far corner where the basin sat.
Water. He splashed it on his face, letting it run down his neck. The coldness bit into his skin, but it was the only thing real, the only thing alive.
He looked up at the ceiling, the cracks twisting in patterns he couldn't understand.
His reflection was fractured, a broken thing in the basin's silver. The face that stared back was pale and gaunt, eyes too large for a body so small. The lips pressed tight, a sealed wound.
He tried to open them, to make a sound. Nothing.
Tears welled up in his eyes, but he wiped them away with the back of his hand. Tears were weakness here. He couldn't afford weakness.
The silence pressed closer. The walls seemed to breathe with him, watching.
His mind wandered back to the desert, to the Trial. The heat, the sand beneath his feet, the endless sky that had seemed so cruel and wide. The memories were sharper than the dull ache in his muscles. He remembered the screams—the ones that weren't his but echoed inside him all the same.
He sat on the floor again, fingers tracing invisible lines on the stone. The ache of loneliness wrapped around him, heavier than chains. He hated this silence. Hated it with a burning, desperate fire.
But there was no one to scream at. No one to answer.
He closed his eyes and let the darkness come.
The silence didn't end.
It waited.
And he knew it would be here long after the rest of him was gone.
His body shivered—not from cold, but from something deeper, a primal fear that clawed at his chest.
He was alone. Trapped. Broken.
And still, somewhere buried beneath the weight of silence, something inside him refused to die.